Ashton's War
by LikWid-MeTal
Summary: The machine's death camps are brutal, but life for this group of prisoners is about to change.


Ashton's War  
  
It was raining, and raining hard. The clouds above thundered and cracked, as the heavens opened. Corporal Bruce Ashton sat on a small pile of scrap metal, drawing on his cigarette, exhaling slowly as the lights above danced over the ground. Casually he stood and walked to the fence line of this cage, this death camp. The machines were doing well, apparently, At least thirty bodies a day arrived on Model A8's, where Ashton and the other remaining prisoners moved the bodies and junk to the processors. There, the bodies were broken down and transported to Skynet's factories to assimilation into new skins and body parts, or liquefied and stored to feed the prisoners. Ashton spat at the thought of eating the remains of his comrades, but it kept them alive. They needed to break out, and soon.  
  
Breaking out was the hard part. He glanced up to sky as the roar of turbines approached from the east, where the fighting was the worst. Where he had been captured. He tossed his cigarette into a nearby puddle, the sizzling sound masked as the familiar Type 770c A8 HK cleared the top of the communications array. The clustered human prisoners dispersed as the HK came to a slow halt above the prison grounds. The prison was quite small, apparently to conserve resources for Terminator production Ashton assumed. Naturally it offered little solitude for the prisoners. Fed once a day, housed in a small room with no beds or windows, no running water or toilet. It was grim existence, if it could be classified as one. And no hope for their future and nothing to comfort them except for maybe a quick, painless death.  
  
His pack of smokes was the only thing the machines let him have. To the machines, Ashton was killing himself, so the supposed intelligence of Skynet didn't care one way or another if he smoked or not. At that thought he checked his pack. Two left.  
  
He turned as a door hissed opened behind him. Two T-800's with M25's stomped out of the building, their evil red eyes causing the prisoners to shiver. They stopped a few feet in front of them and motioned with their rifles. Miserably they moved, a few cursing here and there. But there was one man who didn't say a word. Ashton watched him closely as they moved to the gates and pulled them open so the converted flat-bed hover truck could enter. He wondered what his name was.  
  
The whine of the turbines got louder as the A8 slowly descending to softly land in the middle of the yard. Its lights flicked off and the T-800's escorted the prisoners to the back. They uttered a single, monotonous word: "Work."  
  
They began moving the bodies onto the truck, carrying the burnt, sizzled remains of friends and family. It tugged hard on his emotions, urging him to do something. But it was no point. It was hard being against an enemy so strong. He gently lifted the body of a small child from the back of the container, and realised with horrible certainty it was still alive. He gurgled softly on his own blood, as the mangled remains of his legs slowly poured his life away.  
  
"Dada...is that you?" the boy muttered through crimson lips, eyes wide with delirium. His end was near. A tear ran down Ashton's cheek, and he reached down slowly and ran a hand through the boy's matted hair. "No, son, I'm not your daddy. Just close your eyes ok?" The boy coughed and shuddered.  
  
The T-800 walked over, rifle aimed.  
  
"Drop the boy!" it droned.  
  
Ashton held the boy protectively to his chest. He heard the plasma rifle power up and he prepared himself for the end. The bolt fired. Ashton opened his eyes as he heard an explosion, and saw one of the prisoners wrestling with the terminator. Nearby the other T-800 lay twisted on the dirt, spitting sparks into the cold air. Another bolt ripped through the night air, and a prisoner screamed his final scream as his torso was blasted in two. The menacing red eyes fixated on its next target and drove another searing plasma bolt through warm flesh. More screams filled the cold night. Ashton ducked and watched the prisoner pull a small, silver cylinder from his pocket and light it. Quickly he stuffed the object into the endoskeleton and dived to one side before the explosion sent metal fragments in all directions. Ashton screamed as hot metal cut his flesh, his breath frosty in the air as he fell to his knees. He felt hands grasp his body and drag him away, as more plasma bolts burnt the air around them.  
  
Soon the sounds became duller and duller as the thumps of explosions grew dimmer and dimmer. He drifted in and out of consciousness. "...he's gonna make it. Get him through the fence now!" "Yes sir." Slowly Ashton opened his eyes to meet the hard brown eyes of another. "You'll make it, Bruce...just hold on." Before he passed out again, he caught the name of the soldier's vest. It said "Reece". 


End file.
